Is the DA more fit to govern than the ANC?
What recent events related to COVID-19 show
FAR FROM HOME
As a South African living in Europe, I follow the news from home greedily. It makes me laugh and I even get a small tear when I see some of the horror stories. I am only here temporarily (I got stuck last year) so I look forward to when I will return home.
WHAT IS HAPPENING ON THE BEACHES AND THE SIDEWALKS?
I’m choosing to write this because I have been speaking with friends and family in Cape Town and Durban, and like them, am worried about what is happening on the beaches especially, but now also what they tell me is happening in supermarkets and on the pavements.
Apparently, since the beaches were unbanned, they’re seeing a large number of people not bothering to wear masks at all. They say this is not only happening on the sand, but also around the beachfronts and in other areas.
One of them went to Llandudno yesterday and left because it was the same story as Fish Hoek.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE DA?
From far away, it seems to me that this change followed the unbanning of the beaches, but also the beach protests. Following what the other guest writer here said in the previous post, I wonder if the Cape Metro Police did not ever receive instructions to tell people to put on their masks on the day the beach protests happened. If that is the case, is the City of Cape Town now telling their Metro Police personnel not to intervene when they see the many people who are not wearing their masks? Or are they just neglecting this important aspect of controlling the transmission and spread of COVID-19 because they are overloaded by crime elsewhere? I can’t imagine that it would be a strategy to win more votes. That would just be criminal and very immoral.
FITNESS TO GOVERN
It might seem extreme to use the lack of enforcement of these laws as an example of their fitness to govern. I have always appreciated what they have done with infrastructure, like road improvements, and thought that showed they had the capacity to govern. However, there are also the stories of corruption in the DA when it comes to allocating land for development. I haven’t followed up on those in recent times, though. Perhaps they have improved their land allocations. They also seem to be good at managing education. I read the exam results each year and I’m always impressed by how well the children in the Western Cape do.
SO WHAT DOES THE MASK STORY TELL US ABOUT THEIR FITNESS TO GOVERN?
Well, what worries me are two things:
Firstly, as far as I know, it is still an offence not to wear a mask in public. Secondly, we keep hearing about how the vaccines will take a long time to arrive. We are told by the DA and others that this means that the new variant is very problematic as the existing vaccines don’t protect South Africans as well as the ANC government had hoped.
So, how fit can the DA be to govern if they a) don’t enforce laws that they seem to agree with in public statements and b) they know that the new variant is causing a lot of trouble.
THE DA’s STORY
After speaking to friends last night, I made a point of listening to John Steenhuisen’s “The True (?) State of the Nation”. In it, he focused today on corruption in the ANC. Now, there is a lot of evidence of corruption and many commissions to support that.
But I wondered why Mr Steenhuisen always focuses on what the ANC is doing wrong, and not more on what the DA is doing well. And, if he is a leader of integrity, on what they need to fix in their own party and across the Western Cape or in the metropoles where they ‘govern’.
I work in marketing so I notice the stories that companies and other types of organisations build over time. And I’m not sure that the DA’s story is really working for them. And, I know that their approach to the mask story is really going to bite all of us hard in coming months and years.
COME ON, DA. YOU CAN DO BETTER. OUR LIVES DEPEND ON YOU TOO.
